Over the patchwork levels of eastern England
that familiar image
of a banking Spitfire beyond their shoulders
between them it roars
as the war bound them sixty years together
loving to talk though struggling still
to unmute to get the camera going
yet it’s better this way
since he sees who’s talking more easily
he can be more involved
though sometimes the laptop screen
is angled so I catch only the crowns
of grey heads then a giant hand
reaches forward to re-adjust
re-appears holding The Wiltshire Times
its crashes and floods and marriages
and something else too blurred
even if the connection holds
but if it wavers faces split to stained glass
or cubist fragments or fairground mirrors
still talking blithely asking me still
if I can see these crocuses
the lawn in sunshine their bird table
where sparrows in pairs come for food and drink
The poem is reprinted from his collection The Lovely Disciplines (Seren, Bridgend, 2017) by kind permission of the author.